I'm sure this is on here some place, but I did a search and looked threw a few pages of several sections and did not find a thread.

Anyway what happens is my external usb sata hard drive goes into power save mode and I get error like I pulled the usb hard drive or shut it off, etc. I can get it back by pulling the usb cable out and pluging it back in or shutting power off on the drive and turning it on. I have all the power save modes set to always on that I could find in system menu. I also have the power save modes as always on in BIOS too. I'm figuring there is an additional driver or I need send a command to set the external usb hard drive as always on or something.

I'm using Vector linux 7.0 on an old duron 1.3ghz, but over all it seems to run fine, at least so far, but I haven't had vector linux on the machine for long.

First off as that link you posted is really old from 2008, are you positive this will work on Vector 7.0, "install the sdpam utility for my Debian Etch distro"? I'm pretty new to Linux but I in Ubuntu 11.04/11.10/12.04 some Debian stuff worked and others did not.

My other question is once I get the sdpam (sdparm?) utility, I run this in a terminal window "sdparm --clear STANDBY -6 /dev/sd[Your device]" or did I mess up something? Also should I run it with SUDO in front? I'm kina scared of hdparm, Is sdparm the same? I ran into a problem on hard drive parameters on Ubuntu while reconfiguring a swap partition and some how hosed part of a windows drive partition on a different drive. Luckily the drive didn't have anything to worry about on it. I don't want to do that on the USB as it has a lot of stuff on it.

I am running into a snag, I think the drive looks to be coming up as a hard drive rather than as a usb device. I get this with "sdparm -a /dev/sdc" "open error: /dev/sdc [read only]: No such file or directory"

If I look when the usb drive is recognized, before it powers down, is the drives volume label when I look with file manager in "media". I should have mentioned this before, I'm not sure if it makes a difference but the usb drive is formatted windows fat32.OH something else that it does is restart after a little while and open a new file manager window and then it times out shuts off and ..... real annoying.Anyway any other ideas how to fix this?

This may also be something to do with the USB device setting for the drive

Bigpaws

I'm pretty sure there aren't any settings, and no jumpers for sure, not even a place to solder one on, on the device. Its an external drive case with a SATA drive in it that plugs into a USB port, the critter didn't have any software with it or available on their web site either. That's the big problem with modern crap hardware no way to config things if default won't work. So I'm jumping threw hoops to find a software fix. And search ain't working worth shit as I don't know the exact way to state the problem.

It seems to be power save to me as it stays on when writing but shuts off if left alone or when reading a big file. And after it shuts off you can't restart the read even after the drive is reloaded, like when when trying to copy a big file off the drive it stops and the drive disappears from file manager and that's it.

I am running into a snag, I think the drive looks to be coming up as a hard drive rather than as a usb device. I get this with "sdparm -a /dev/sdc" "open error: /dev/sdc [read only]: No such file or directory"

If I look when the usb drive is recognized, before it powers down, is the drives volume label when I look with file manager in "media". I should have mentioned this before, I'm not sure if it makes a difference but the usb drive is formatted windows fat32.OH something else that it does is restart after a little while and open a new file manager window and then it times out shuts off and ..... real annoying.Anyway any other ideas how to fix this?

I am curious and wondering if you have done a best of three. if it appears to time out is the time consistent, you say it does this on large files so if you have three different.... also if you have a couple of live cd you could test on other systems to see if it does the same. may help to pin it to something via time or if it is vector specific. perhaps you have done this, was just a thought while reading.

I am curious and wondering if you have done a best of three. if it appears to time out is the time consistent, you say it does this on large files so if you have three different.... also if you have a couple of live cd you could test on other systems to see if it does the same. may help to pin it to something via time or if it is vector specific. perhaps you have done this, was just a thought while reading.

This is a common problem with some USB drives. If you do a search, you'll see it's not limited to a specific distribution. The drive itself is responsible for letting the OS know it's time to go to sleep.

Yes, I guessed it was related to newer sata usb. I have an older usb enclosure for ide drives but it will take various drives, I thought it may be a newer version with sata or ide and perhaps the time out would shed some light ..the links suggest that sdparm is the key..perhaps I should stick to reading...cheers

I am running into a snag, I think the drive looks to be coming up as a hard drive rather than as a usb device. I get this with "sdparm -a /dev/sdc" "open error: /dev/sdc [read only]: No such file or directory"

If I look when the usb drive is recognized, before it powers down, is the drives volume label when I look with file manager in "media". I should have mentioned this before, I'm not sure if it makes a difference but the usb drive is formatted windows fat32.OH something else that it does is restart after a little while and open a new file manager window and then it times out shuts off and ..... real annoying.Anyway any other ideas how to fix this?

The case is a IO magic, its a pretty generic SATA to USB.I have several drives, I swap in and out of it.One is a Hitachi, and several Western Digital's. all have the power save bit, which I'm thinking is my problem.